Special investigation reveals the seedy underbelly of Brisbane’s karaoke scene

Illegal alcohol, suspected drug use or prostitution, and wild drunken brawls – Brisbane’s karaoke scene has a dark side and police are eyeing anti-bikie laws as part of a crackdown on dodgy venues.

IT’S 10pm on a Friday when armed police move down an alleyway to a wooden backdoor of the Red Hut Asian Delight Chinese restaurant.

The restaurant isn’t their target. What police are looking for is on the second floor — a karaoke bar barely visible from the busy main road at Coopers Plains in Brisbane’s south.

It’s part of a push, which The Courier-Mail reveals today, by authorities into southeast Queensland’s karaoke scene amid concerns some venues are home to a plethora of prohibited activities.

This night, the officers are focusing on people they can see in the upstairs window. No one lets them in. Five minutes pass. They batter down two doors, swarming up an internal staircase and into the Red Chilli Karaoke Bar.

Red Chilli Karaoke is above the Red Hut restaurant at Coopers Plains. Picture: AAP Image/Richard Waugh

Inside they find about a dozen “hostesses” and six men, whom police order to squat down and hold self-written name cards above their heads.

It is one of three raids, with cops allegedly finding a room with bedding, used towels, condoms, tissues and lubricant. Lingerie and make-up lay around in another. On an earlier raid, Liquor Licensing tallies 26 bottles of Johnnie Walker whiskey, 11 of Hennessy VSOP cognac, two of Grey Goose vodka and three cartons of Toohey’s Extra Dry at the unlicensed venue.

The cops unsuccessfully looked for worse in another raid in which Australian Border Force arrived with drug detection dogs: cocaine and ecstasy, according to search warrants.

Police suspect the venue is “being used to unlawfully supply liquor and facilitate prostitution and/or adult entertainment”, according to an affidavit by Upper Mt Gravatt Tactical Crime Squad Sergeant Nicholas Burns filed in court action about confiscated goods.

A photo taken by police during the raids on Red Chilli Karaoke.

But one man who portrays the police as having made a big mistake is Chih-Jen “Tony” Jiang.

Jiang is the bar owner and was forced to squat on that last raid in December. The Taiwanese-born man, 32, had only opened the bar seven months earlier. The venue is just a fun way for people such as businessmen to relax after work or celebrate property settlements, while being entertained by hostesses, Jiang tells Holland Park Magistrates Court in an affidavit.

“(They) are taught games with dice and it is common within our cultural background to play these games while drinking,” he says.

“A person may roll the dice and play rock, paper, scissors and the loser has to have the next drink. There is singing,” he continues. “At no time was there any lewd activities at my karaoke rooms.”

He says patrons bring their alcohol while hostesses — some young university students from Japan, Korea, China or Thailand — can earn good money; about $700 a week. Under no circumstances are they to “take their clothes off”, he adds. As for the room with bedding? He says that room was not leased by him and he has never seen any condoms or lingerie lying around in the karaoke premises. Staffers also say they had never seen condoms at the venue.

LONG TRACK

Karaoke started in the 1970s, with Japanese inventor Daisuke Inoue regarded as creator of the singing machines. Its popularity ballooned across Asia with everyone from schoolgirls to couples singing karaoke to unwind.

Partygoers belt out songs on machines with tracks in multiple languages. There’s tunes such as classic American rocker Elvis Presley’s All Shook Up, or Tonight by Hong Kong pop crooner Raymond Lam.

If anything, it’s typically a decent, fun night out for those who hit venues in Sunnybank, a popular southside suburb for Asian families.

“You hang out with friends,” says a 21-year-old student who moved to Brisbane from Taiwan. “Even if you are not a good singer … singing is fun,” adds his friend.

Their experiences are tame compared with the wild antics landing some karaoke venues in troubled water.

Karaoke started in the 1970s, with Japanese inventor Daisuke Inoue regarded as creator of the singing machines.

BOOZY BUSINESS

A fight’s broken out between singers at two karaoke rooms at Newway at Sunnybank. Blurry CCTV footage shows a youngster swinging a bottle. A free-for-all erupts. Cowering girls jump onto the seats.

Eventually, the fight moves into the foyer. It’s a scene reminiscent of a typical pub fight, only in this case, it’s a singing venue and there’s a lone bouncer.

He tries in vain to separate the brawlers but a patron just picks up a tray to slam against his foe’s head. The security guard later tells authorities he had been instructed to spend his watch by his car and not check IDs, according to court documents used in a Liquor Licensing prosecution.

Newway Karaoke bar in Sunnybank Hills. AAP Image/Richard Waugh

Those same documents detail a man that night skolling a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and, after passing out, others take selfies with him. Next the man falls off his bench, throws up on himself, has chips stuffed up his nose and is slapped by a woman. It’s among a string of incidents leading to more than $160,000 in fines against four karaoke venues in Brisbane since 2017, according to an Insight tally. Newway has been hit with 22 charges, including letting patrons pour their own drinks to the point of vomiting, and then allowing them to booze more.

Attempts by Insight to obtain comment from Newway were unsuccessful.

Investigators also failed in attempts to speak to Xiao Xiao, director of the company that owned the business. They say Xiao, who owns a $4.3 million waterfront home at Yeronga, in Brisbane’s southwest, spent most of his time in China. Investigators could not gauge whether breaches came through a “flagrant disregard” for the rules or “a lack of understanding”.

One year earlier, in September 2016, investigators were searching another karaoke bar down the road, this time Lexington Queen.

The Lexington Queen Karaoke bar at Sunnybank Hills. Picture: AAP Image/Richard Waugh

Occupying the floor above a Chinese restaurant, patrons breached the rules by playing dice-rolling games where the loser skols a drink. There was also trading out-of-hours.

CCTV at times was covered to conceal activities. And when CCTV was on, a “comatose” man was piggy backed out just 10 minutes after another patron had been similarly removed.

The bar was fined $75,000. It would later also be dragged into a corruption scandal.

POLITICAL ACTION

Back in early 2016 Logan’s then mayor Luke Smith allegedly drank premium blue-label Johnnie Walker at Lexington Queen into the early hours of the morning, according to information provided to an ongoing Crime and Corruption Commission investigation. The whiskey was purportedly supplied free, and someone from the venue allegedly said the CCTV would be switched off.

The bar was majority owned by developer SKL Cables, a donor and company with interests in Logan and which has been dragged into a corruption charge, being defended by the now-suspended mayor. Another politician to pop up at Lexington Queen came from further afield.

Ipswich’s then mayor Paul Pisasale, himself now battling an unrelated corruption charge, also dropped in, had a drink at the bar, then left, says former Lexington Queen manager Rebecca Zhang.

Rebecca Zhang, Luke Smith and Jorce Yu.

Zhang describes the bar as laid back, with piano music playing and customers at times offered cut watermelon, pineapple or even McDonald’s chicken nuggets and fries on platters.

But the memories aren’t all great. Zhang says she is still owed wages and in 2017 she was hit with $9000 in fines after pleading guilty to six liquor license breaches. One of SKL’s directors at the time, Zhiming Mai, told the court in pleading guilty to Liquor Licensing offences he had been unaware of breaches until mid-2016. He and fellow director Jorce Yu could not be contacted. But Insight understands Yu also took southeast Queensland politicians to a karaoke bar in Shenzhen when they were on a 2016 trade mission.

Lexington Queen is now closed, yet when Insight visited in December, with it under new management, entry was refused. Above a locked entrance door was a spotlight and security camera, while inside people were singing. A staffer appeared to say the venue was booked out. It was 9pm on a Thursday night.

GOLDEN GOOSE

Big dollars are at work. Hiring a karaoke room can be as cheap as $35 an hour, but at select venues with hostesses, prices skyrocket.

One night at Red Chilli — partying with four hostesses — can cost upwards of $2000, according to invoices. A large room there can cost $250 an hour, Jiang says. Hostesses are charged out at $80 an hour, of which they pocket $50 “purely to sing, entertain and pour drinks”.

An invoice from the Red Chilli Karaoke bar raid.

One former hostess in Queensland says work could be lucrative — one tip even reached near $1000. “The money is good,” she tells Insight. But customers might pick out hostesses from a line up; if you’re not chosen, you’re not paid. Occasionally, some hostesses are propositioned for sex. There was a strictly enforced no-prostitution line at her venue, but she says some women might meet clients privately.

While big bills can flow from one epic night, weighty financial forces also trudge through the courts. Take how Brisbane-based Top Plus, which holds rights to karaoke film clips from Hong Kong companies, since 2009 has filed more than 15 Federal Court cases about copyright.

One 2012 lawsuit was against an 18-room Brisbane karaoke venue that allegedly showed music videos in breach of copyright. Top Plus claimed losses of $119,000 between 2009 and 2011. A defence was never filed, and the venue was ordered to stop infringing copyright.

NEW CRACKDOWN

Back at the Red Chilli Karaoke building, restaurateur Cao Libing, 54, shows The Courier-Mail his broken door. The China-born business owner, who doesn’t run the karaoke bar, says he has his own room upstairs where he sleeps and he was caught up in the raid.

The tiny-framed man demonstrates how police made him squat. Via a translator, he says they made him feel like a criminal, nothing wrong lurks upstairs, and he questions why police hassle Jiang’s karaoke bar.

the scene at Red Chilli Karaoke during a police raid.

It’s not Jiang’s first legal strife. He was sole director of a company behind the Red & Blue Karaoke in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. It was fined $25,000 in late 2017 for multiple Liquor Licensing breaches: vomit on lounges, under cushions; cockroaches and rodent faecal matter.

Police allege in court documents that before they arrived, Jiang had been in a karaoke room in which police found drugs, and staff had provided patrons an implement for consuming drugs. The new business, Red Chilli, is meanwhile accused of illegally selling $37,000 worth of alcohol.

Still, Jiang has recovered some of the $100,000 worth of karaoke equipment seized in December. And a magistrate was “not satisfied that the evidence establishes any indecent conduct or prostitution at (Red Chilli).”

But Jiang’s police troubles are not over. Insight can reveal Sgt Burns has told court he plans to level a restricted premises application on the venue.

That’s a bikie-busting law. Cops previously unleashed it to crush clubhouses of outlaw motorcycle gangs. If successful, police would have unlimited warrantless search powers. Any venue owner aware of anti-social or criminal activities could face 18 months in jail.

Police declined interview requests but Jiang’s barrister, Sam Di Carlo, blasts the legal manoeuvre. “It is not the intention of the legislation and it was certainly an overreach,” he tells Insight.

“If they found the sale of liquor the obvious charges were you would charge them for selling liquor without a license. This is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”